James R. Kass, PhD (Canada)

Dr. Kass has been working in the field of human spaceflight for more than 30 years. He started his studies in the field of physics gaining a BSc, MS, and PhD in physics (Canada, USA, and England) inspired by the first ventures of humans into space in the 60's. He was an investigator, part of the European scientific team, on the first Spacelab mission in the early 80's in the field of neurophysiology. In the decade following, he gained industrial experience at several aerospace companies in Germany, before joining the European Space Agency at its research and technology centre, ESTEC, in the Netherlands.

Dr. Kass has trained astronauts and worked on the ground operations teams for several Spacelab /Space Shuttle and MIR missions (including the tragic STS-107), with crews from Russia, USA, Middle and Far East, and several European countries. He has also worked with cosmonauts of the former Salyut space station and astronauts of the first US space station, Skylab. He has participated as scientist and reviewer in several isolation experiments investigating psychology of long-duration isolation, as one will certainly encounter on Mars. He has taught in the fields of neurophysiology, biophysical research, and space psychology at universities in Germany, France, Spain, Canada, and England (where he still lectures in the Faculty of Medicine, University College, London).

"I am delighted to be part of the team advising on this challenging venture, whose realization could result in the historic first human settlement on another planet. This could certainly be the long-awaited step forward, for which the space community has been hoping, following the previous historic steps of orbital spaceflight and visits to the Earth's Moon several decades ago!”